Ten Minutes to Midnight
by badriddance
Summary: A ten ficlets for ten songs fic meme. Mentions most of the main characters except Laurie. Rorschach, Dan, Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian, and Veidt show up here and there.


There is nothing like a meme to break a creative block. I don't know where this started, but the first place I saw it was at supaslim's.

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**Here's the thing:**

**1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like. In this case, Watchmen, **

**2. Turn your music player on and turn it on random/shuffle.**

**3. Write a drabblet/ficlet related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterward! No matter how whacked out your drabble is. :)**

**4. Do ten of these, then post them.**

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I lucked out. I got some good and, I think, appropriate songs in my 10. #6 is my favorite. They're too short to get a whole chapter to themselves, so I posted them all together here.

*

#1.

**Go It Alone **Rorschach POV

_Climbin' up on the back porch fence _

_Just to see the dogs runnin' _

_With a ring and a question _

_And my shiverin' voice is singing _

_Thru a crack in the window _

_-_Go It Alone, Beck

He was going over the list in his head, a list of all the people he didn't need. He should've needed some of them maybe, like his parents. A boy needs a father, people liked to say, and maybe his life would've been better if his dad had stuck around. But he hadn't, and Rorschach had gotten along anyway. He hadn't needed his mother, would've been better off without _her_.

He didn't need any of the people he saw. The contempt they radiated when they saw him with his sign on a daily basis was entirely mutual.

He didn't need a partner either. He was doing just fine without one, but he had to admit that that was the only connection that caused a pang when he lost it. Maybe because it was the only that he had chosen for himself.

*

#2.

**Out of Hand** Rorschach POV

_I'm for law and order, the way that it should be _

_This song's about the night they spent protecting you from me _

_Someone called this outlaw, in some ol' magazine _

_New York sent a posse down like I ain't never seen_

-Don't You Think This Outlaw Thing Has Done Got Out of Hand? Metallica (Waylon Jennings)

The resentment burned like the stitch in his side. It galled him to have to run at all, but especially from _them_. They were supposed to be the city's protectors. They had let the city crumble like a sand castle under the tide of corruption, and instead of doing something about it, they were chasing _him_.

If they were half this diligent chasing murderers and rapists, the streets would be twice as safe. They let their hands be tied and their laws be twisted and the only thing that could drag them out of their chairs was the chance to arrest the people who were forced to take up the job that they had neglected.

*

#3.

**How this Ends** Dr. Manhattan POV

_Yet you already know_

_How this will end_

How It Ends -DeVotchka

It didn't seem worth the effort. Why even bother to take any action at all? Because it wouldn't happen if he didn't and while once upon a time, he might've been tempted to change his own fate by going against his own certainty of the future, now he was dragged along by his own puppet strings.

He knew exactly was going to happen, and had lost the inclination to even question it. Was fate set in stone? His was. He could see it, from beginning to end. He knew that his human counterparts wanted him to change it to their advantage. He knew exactly what they would say to convince him. He already knew what he would say in reply.

Was the future set because it was set, or because he refused to defer from the one course he could see for himself? That was the only argument that would make him pause. And while he knew what he would say, he also knew that that was the question that come back to require more answering later.

*

#4.

**Behind Blue Eyes** Veidt POV

_No one knows how to say_

_That they're sorry and don't worry_

_I'm not telling lies_

-Behind Blue Eyes by The Who

It had occurred to Veidt (he liked to think that there was little that didn't) that he had replaced war rather than eliminated it. He had replaced it with himself. Everything that the people around him had been afraid of, he had realized. To prevent unexpected devastation on a heavily populated area, he had unleashed just that. He had done what he had been determined to prevent.

It was an interesting, if painful paradox. Of all of them, he had thought Rorschach might have an inkling. To stop a murderer, you had to become one, lose your own innocence to be sure the murderer never killed again. Veidt had done that, on a much larger scale, of course.

*

#5.

**Class** Rorschach POV

_There ain't no gentlemen_

_To open up the doors_

_There ain't no ladies now,_

_There's only pigs and whores_

Class from Chicago

Maybe there were good people left in the world, but it was hard to see them through the layers of filth. Even decent people could be corrupted slowly, becoming more sluttish in their dress and depraved in their actions. It was a grim evolution, watching them blend more and more into the city way of life. It might've been part camouflage, a self-defense method. It might've been just that no one got away untainted.

*

#6.

**Turnaround** Dan POV

_Bits and pieces, you offered_

_Of your life, _

_I didn't think they meant a lot_

_Or said much for you_

_And all the chances to follow_

_Didn't make a lot of sense when stacked against the choices you made_

_Yours was the open road._

_The bitter song, the heavy load_

_That I couldn't share_

_Though the offer was there._

_Every time you turned around_

-Turnaround, Stan Rogers

It took too long to realize how much pain his partner had swallowed up. Dan had halfway wondered for years what was poisoning Rorschach slowly over time. It got more and more obvious with each more and more infrequent visit.

At the end, with only the memories of all the times he had seen his partner walk away, it had occurred to Dan that maybe it was Rorschach that he should've been saving this whole time. Maybe that's what he was doing without really realizing the whole time they were partners.

*

#7.

**Dog Eat Dog** Grice POV

_It's a world where the dog eats the dog_

_Where they kill for bones in the street_

_And God in His Heaven_

_He don't interfere_

_'Cause he's dead as the stiffs at my feet_

_I raise my eyes to see the heavens_

_And only the moon looks down_

-Dog Eat Dog, Les Miserables

Grice came home whistling with a treat for the dogs. Sometimes things just went perfect. And if it really was wrong wouldn't someone have come to stop him? No one had. No one had even cared. The first few times he had done this, he had been nervous for weeks after, scanning papers and radios for any news of police action.

The police didn't care, no one did. Sometimes things just went well. He whistled a little louder, wondering why the dogs weren't barking.

*

#8.

**War Pigs** Veidt POV

_Treating people just like pawns in chess_

_Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah!_

-War Pigs, Hayseed Dixie (Black Sabbath)

Just because he despised them for being this shortsighted and stupid didn't mean he couldn't appreciate how predictable and easy to manipulate they were. They had brought this on the world so it was only fair that they be the tools he used to fix their mistakes. They had brought them this close to ruin with their bad chess games, so now he would have to lead them away from it exactly the same way.

*

#9.

**Taken Chances** Comedian POV

_Now I can cry until I laugh and laugh until I cry_

_So cut the deck right in half, I'll play from either side_

-I Take My Chances, Mary Chapin Carpenter

It was as easy to laugh at the mess as it was to cry. Neither response would solve the problem. Laughing or crying, somebody still had to wade in and get their hands dirty. Might as well grin.

Jobs like these needed clear eyes and steady hands. You had to be at the right place at the right time to rewrite history. You had to be there and then be gone with no one the wiser so the world followed its silly soap opera script to the end. It was hilarious when you thought about it. Not that _that_ was recommended either.

*

#10.

**People Just Ain't No Good**

_It ain't that in their hearts they're bad  
They'd stick by you if they could  
But that's just bullshit  
People just ain't no good_

-People Just Ain't No Good, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

It came to this. The heroes were no better than the villains.

The best and brightest of them was a genocidal maniac, no matter his good intentions. Everybody knew where those led too.

The most dedicated of them was too violent and suspicious to ever be happy anywhere but the pits he hated so much.

The most powerful could barely be bothered to use that power for any reason, much less for what passed for good these days.

The most noble of them could never manage to be there when he was needed most. He was always too late, or somewhere else. There was never anything but bodies and splatters by the time he got there. It was killing him faster than anything else in this dangerous business.

How could they call themselves anybody's saviors after this? Sure, they tried to do what was right. Some of them almost succeeded. In the end, it wasn't enough.


End file.
